International Medical for Financial Services Sector in Africa

Africa’s financial systems face challenges across many dimensions, although the rise in recent years has been incredible. Untapped, unexplored and undeveloped just a matter of a decade ago, now Africa is seeing tremendous development, with profitable opportunities for domestic and global investors.

Banking …

Banking and insurance are the first two industries to make a significant push for market penetration. Banking is seeing large growth in many areas of the continent, while on the other hand, insurance is still very undeveloped except for South Africa, Namibia, and Mauritius. All other African countries have a very low penetration ratio.

In Africa, there is evidence that, foreign and private owned banks are more efficient than their public counterparts and that banks could save between 20% to 30% of their total cost if they were operating efficiently

Since the mid 1980s, many African countries have implemented financial sector reforms. To a large extent, the reforms were aimed at restructuring and privatizing state controlled banks which are often run poorly with inefficient results. Many of the multinational banks are relocating regional offices from outside the African continent to countries like South Africa, Mauritius, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and others.

Insurance …

International companies with with significant investments in Africa’s financial industry have management executives, IT professionals, sales and marketing employees, development and construction departments and many other full and part time employees and contractors working and expanding all parts of the African continents financial services infrastructure.

Africa’s ‘uninsured’ markets present numerous opportunities for not only large foreign and African insurance companies, but also for niche insurers who sell low-cost products to the lower income market. Additionally, the new mobile money has also brought a new dimension to Africa’s insurance industry, where buying insurance on a mobile phone is an exciting growth area as it offers a more affordable way for Africans, especially in remote regions, to gain access to insurance products.

For the most part, Africa has a young population, a growing middle class, most with smartphones. There’s a whole new generation of savvy consumers with disposable income and large infrastructure projects planned and currently under construction.

With Africa’s growing financial services industry and the influx of multinational companies and employees working on long-term projects, the global employees and contractors are in need of flexible, comprehensive International Medical Insurance policies, to care for their medical and prescription needs.

Quality global medical insurance policies provide protection worldwide including every county of Africa.